Category: Travel

Voyages

Quelque part dans le ciel, entre Paris et Oslo

Photo by Christelle Hayek on Unsplash

Parka noire et sac de voyage. Un grand sac bandoulière en cuir. J’ai laissé tomber les valisettes à roulette, pas assez nostalgiques. La magie d’un autre temps qu’enveloppe ce cuir tanné m’inspire, malgré son manque criant de roulettes qui me casse les reins, mais là demeure tout le charme de ce beau bagage un peu encombrant. Dedans, entre les chemises et le nécessaire de toilette, un carnet de cuir noir aux feuilles vierges de lignes ou de carreaux. Un stylo à encre verte. Le dernier Femina de chez Grasset, après l’avant dernier Goncourt de la semaine dernière et le dernier Goncourt des Lycéens de la semaine d’avant. Je sais, je voyage beaucoup ces derniers temps. Ce Femina donc, ne se lit pas d’une traite. Il ne se livre pas aisément.

Ça me rappelle mon pays natal. Ses chênaies sauvages, mystérieuses si l’on veut, voire mystiques. Les vieilles maisons abandonnées que l’on y retrouve, les vieilles chapelles en pierre de taille sur lesquelles débouchent les chemins oubliés de ces forêts de la montagne. Elles portent l’histoire de familles que l’une des vagues d’émigration que le pays connait depuis le XIXe siècle a transplantées sous d’autres cieux, brésiliens ou américains. Elles portent l’histoire d’un pays, une histoire que les livres d’histoire ont sans doute oubliée, comme celle de cette église de la montagne, doublée d’un petit couvent, érigée par la grâce d’un don du roi de France aux chrétiens de ce coin d’Orient.

Il ne reste de trace écrite de ce morceau d’histoire que la stèle en marbre qui surplombe son portail trois fois centenaire. Et la photo que j’en ai prise lors de mon avant dernier passage. Et les quelques lignes que je couche sur les feuilles vierges de lignes et de carreaux de mon carnet de cuir noir, à l’encre verte de ce stylo que j’ai fini par retrouver au fond du sac, d’une main assez peu assurée, la faute aux turbulences qui nous balancent depuis quelques minutes quelque part au-dessus de l’Allemagne, à moins que ce ne soit la Suède.

D’autres pépites encore plus confidentielles n’ont pas gardé de traces dans le grand live de l’histoire de ce petit pays au bord de l’oubli, comme ces puits et canaux creusés par des générations disparues, irrigant on ne sait quels vieux villages disparus, chemins autrefois ensoleillés des pas des villageois que les villes et l’émigration auront soustrait à la montagne, chemins aujourd’hui l’apanage de chênes centenaires.

Les rencontres improbables entre l’expatrié que je suis et ces vieilles pierres oubliées au fond d’une chênaie de la montagne me rappellent que ce petit pays au bord de l’oubli recèle encore bien des émotions pour qui veut bien prendre la peine de les chercher, de les trouver. Mes enfants sont évidemment de la partie. Rendez-vous est pris avec la montagne à chaque passage au vieux pays. Leur grands parents et leurs potes, presque tous d’anciens scouts, s’occuperont de l’organisation, sous la houlette de Raymond, randonneur acharné devant l’Eternel et Grand Sachem sans qui ces randonnées hebdomadaires n’auront sans doute pas vu le jour.

Je les vois plein d’entrain courir sur ces vieux chemins de terre. Ils en ont plein les yeux. Une attache de plus avec le pays de leurs parents. J’espère juste qu’elle durera plus longtemps que leur enfance et qu’adultes, ils garderont un souvenir ému, une petite place dans leur cœur pour ce pauvre pays qui ne les aura pas vus naître.

Quant à moi, j’implore le bon Dieu dans la langue du cœur, celle dans laquelle je suis né, je l’implore de m’épargner des turbulences et de me mener à bon port, et je compte les secondes de cette heure et demie qui me sépare encore d’un atterrissage bien mérité à Oslo.

Let the board sound

Rabih

On a girl with character and a muscle car

An apple red 1974 Dodge Challenger, rushing through the turns in a futile tentative to reach the summer sunset, before the night sets in. The girl driving it was not running away. She was speed-driving an oppressing feeling of inevitability off her chest and onto the asphalt, racing the race of her life in an attempt to beat the chequered flag before it signaled the end she was dreading. It was 6 PM already and the stakes were growing higher by the minute. She was driving towards the capital, with 2 hours to go according to the GPS, but much less according to her plans: the tuned and well looked after muscle car had a top speed of more than 200 kilometers per hour and the girl could not care less about speed tickets or traffic. She was planning on cutting through anything or anyone standing in her way.

Photo by Traf

The sun had already set by the time the car finally came to a stop. 37 minutes to departure. That was 7 minutes before the gates would close, but it was already too late for her. Even with all the time in the world, she would have never been able to reach them without a couple of much sought after passes: a European or American passport or visa and a valid plane ticket, both of which she did not have. Fortune favors the bold. She reached to her chest, grabbed a golden medallion and the picture hidden inside, put it to her lips, took a deep breath and started running the fastest sprint ever run. 372 meters, through revolving doors, a couple of stairs, three border police checkpoints and all the crowds trying to flee this god forsaken land. She had already 12 cops on her soles by the time she reached the departures gates, with 3 minutes to spare. And then she saw him, right at the other end of the terminal, the last passenger boarding, and too far to hear her over the crowd. All she could do was stare at his back while she still could, before she would be taken down by 12 angry men. Right at the last second, in a fortunate twist of fate, or maybe thanks to providence, he turned back, as if to wish this land farewell one last time. Their eyes crossed, and what he could not have heard in her silent voice, he saw in her big brown eyes. He knew right at this moment that his life would never be the same. He dropped his bags and rushed to her through the crowd.

Nothing else mattered.

To Rita, to the love of my life

Let the board sound

Rabih

Le soleil se lèvera-t-il au bout de la nuit?

Il est 23h38. Je sirote mon café agrémenté d’un bout d’écorce d’orange en cette froide nuit de décembre. Un truc que j’ai appris de mon frère, un fin palais celui-là, et que je vous conseille vivement. L’écorce d’orange, pas le café de minuit bien sûr, si vous tenez au sommeil. Personnellement, le café ne me fait aucun effet, j’irai dormir sur mes deux oreilles dès que nous aurons fini cette conversation cher lecteur, sans doute à cause d’une accoutumance à l’adrénaline et aux effets du stress que je dois à mes origines.

Photo by Andres F. Uran

Je sirote mon café donc, et je pense à cette malédiction du départ, qui n’est que l’autre face de celle de rester. Au-delà des polémiques et autres diatribes sur le sujet, quand on y pense, peu de nos compatriotes partent par choix. Entre le départ et la famine, c’est contraints et forcés qu’ils font leurs bagages quand l’opportunité se présente, et des fois sans même attendre qu’elle ne le fasse. Quant à ceux qui restent, c’est dos au mur qu’ils subissent leur dur destin et le choix n’a rien à faire là-dedans non plus. Ils partiront quand leur heure sera venue, si tant est qu’elle viendra, vers d’autres contrées ou un monde meilleur et ce ne sera pas par choix. Partants, restants, ils partagent la même malédiction.

Alors qu’importe si tu pars ou si tu restes, quand l’avenir que tu contemplais t’échappe et que la faim ou l’exil sont les seuls choix qui restent. Mais s’agit-il vraiment d’un choix? Plutôt un dilemme il me semble. Le choix, tu le feras après: Porter ou pas le nom de notre pays bien haut dans les contrées où tu poseras tes valises après avoir laissé une partie de toi derrière, garder ou pas la tête haute dans cette vallée de larmes où tu restes quand tes amis, tes frères, tes compatriotes partent par milliers, par centaines de milliers… Je suis parti, il y’a de cela des années maintenant. Pas vraiment par choix, pas vraiment contraint, j’avais l’impression de suivre un destin, le destin de ceux qui m’ont précédé, de ceux qui me suivront. Un départ est toujours compliqué à expliquer. Il comporte sa part de lumière et sa part d’ombre et le voyageur n’est pas toujours prêt à faire face à cette dualité. J’imagine que ceux qui restent ne sont pas non plus épargnés par la part d’ombre que ce pseudo-choix comporte également.

Cher lecteur, il est 2 heures du matin et je vois tes yeux qui se ferment déjà. Partant ou restant, tu baisses les armes face au vainqueur universel qu’est le sommeil. Tu aurais dû te le faire couler, ce café agrémenté d’une écorce d’orange. Des écorces, il en reste encore d’abordables au Liban, à défaut du fruit qu’elles sont supposées couvrir, mais elles feront l’affaire. Fais-le donc couler ce café, et trinquons. Attends! Avant, fais couler un filet de bourbon dedans, ça porte malheur de trinquer à la bibine édulcorée. Et trinquons donc. Buvons ce café de minuit à l’honneur de notre pays qui n’existe que depuis 1920 mais qui a été façonné tout au long de plus de six mille ans d’histoire, tout au long des millions d’histoires que ceux qui nous ont précédés se sont racontées et que ceux qui nous suivront se raconterons peut-être, il est permis d’espérer, autour d’un feu de bois ou d’une chandelle, ou un peu comme nous le faisons, autour d’un café agrémenté d’une écorce d’orange, par écrans interposés, mais partageant un fardeau qu’ils seront seuls à porter: du fond de cette nuit noire au bout de laquelle le soleil ne se lèvera peut-être pas, ils sont les uniques dépositaires de l’histoire d’un pays au bord de l’oubli, ils sont les seuls garants de sa continuité.

Alors cher lecteur, où que tu sois, fais que le soleil se lève au bout de la nuit.

A Salim

Let the board sound

Rabih

Cet article a été également publié dans les colonnes de L’Orient-Le Jour.

On a cabin in the woods

Up in the Air, a movie starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick, tells the tale of a guy who’s in-between the plane and the Hilton, all the time. I happened to watch it on a plane, one of the many I would be boarding in a globetrotting game which went on for years, taking me from Paris to Abu Dhabi to Beirut to Moscow to London to Hong Kong to Teheran to Stockholm to Istanbul to Rome to Hamburg to Dallas to Cologne to Milan to Warsaw to Madrid to Amsterdam and back to Paris, many times over and not in the same order. Too many trips to count, some for leisure of course, but most for preaching fintech to financial institutions around the world.

The movie felt so familiar.
Like George, I had more air Miles and Hilton points than I could spend.
Like George, I would be back home every few weeks, for a couple of days, and then back on the road.
And just like George, I had lost touch with most of the people I knew.
Mind you, I was surrounded by people, too many people at times, but still, it felt like being a lone soul in the middle of Times Square at rush hour. Like George.

At some point, Silence and Solitude became lifestyle, and for a while, they became friends. My only friends. They would greet me at the airport when I was back home. No one else would. I would take them out for a walk occasionally having nothing else to do in my free time.

The journey would start around the Place Saint Michel. Pretty lame for a Parisian might you think, but then again, why not? It is close to the Seine and a pretty central part of Paris. I would usually walk up the Rue Saint André des Arts, Solitude on my left, Silence on my right, and get myself a sandwich or a crêpe in one of the many restaurants in this street. I would then bifurcate to the right, through Rue Séguier or Rue des Grands Augustins to reach the eponymous docks, the Quai des Grands Augustins and the Seine river. But most of the times, I would keep walking up the street until I reached Rue de Buci and its many bars. Caipirinha and Mojito were trending back then. My least favorite drinks. There was a bar though, not too far from there, which served a very decent Old Fashioned and some interesting malts, but that’s for another post folks, and besides, I am not a fan of lonely drinking. My peregrinations would then take me south, through the Odéon area, down to the Jardin du Luxembourg where I would spend the rest of the afternoon or the day, not far from a bookshop where time stood still, one which I would be writing about many years later. And what would I be doing all this time? Well, owning time. Taking the time to tame solitude, to savor silence. To reflect on who I am, what I want from life. To think.

One of my fellow authors once quoted Sylvain Tesson, a French writer and traveler, in our e-mail exchanges.

“Et si la liberté consistait à posséder le temps? Et si le bonheur revenait à disposer de solitude, d’espace et de silence – toutes choses dont manqueront les générations futures? Tant qu’il y aura des cabanes au fond des bois, rien ne sera tout à fait perdu.“

Photo by Zachary Kyra-Derksen

« What if freedom consisted in owning time? What if happiness boiled down to having solitude, space and silence – all of which future generations will be lacking? As long as there are cabins deep in the woods, nothing will be completely lost. »

That walk was my cabin in the woods, in the middle of Paris.

Let the board sound

Rabih

On a coffee shop for expatriates

!ازيك يا برنس

That’s read from right to left, pronounced “Ezayyak ya brinse“, and Sayyid’s way of greeting you to his coffee shop every evening. It was not a Starbucks, nor a Costa, and certainly not a French café. No fancy décor, no elevator music, no jazz. Oum Koulthoum was the staple as far as music was concerned. Fairuz could be heard as well. Abdel Halim Hafez also, from time to time. It was as real as it gets in this part of the world: Egyptian tenants, and clients from all over the Arab world: Egyptians obviously, but also Jordanians, Syrians, Palestinians, a few folks from Iraq, a couple of people from North Africa and some Lebanese…

Shisha, a.k.a hookah or arguileh, was common ground. Water pipe that is.

شيشة حامض و نعنع من فضلك

Photo by Mohamadreza Azhdari

The rest depended on personal preferences: Koshari tea, ginger, coffee. Backgammon, Dominos. There was however a code for tobacco. The main choices boiled down to either Mouassal or Ajami. The latter consisted of finely chopped tobacco leaves with a couple of embers placed directly on them. Harder on the lungs supposedly, but definitely harder on the pocket, so most of the folks there would put back their ego where it should remain and take Mouassal, or fruit flavored tobacco. “Two apples” meant you were a newbie, a mistake to avoid at all cost. “Mint and Lemon” was a good compromise and most would smoke that, although a few posers would have more exotic flavors. It was a health disaster in all cases, with one alternative just being less expensive.

Most customers would come in around 9 or 10 PM and many would not leave before 2 AM. They probably had a lot on their minds and no one to share their dreams, their hopes, their fears. All they could do was drown their sorrows in the grey and white volutes of a mint-and-lemon-flavored shisha and make it last long enough to count.

Now would probably be a good time to give you more context. Abu Dhabi, 2009. The wave of the subprime crisis had already hit the shores of Dubai and drowned its swollen real estate market, driving most of its workforce to the neighboring emirate where work was still available. Most of Sayyid’s customers fell in that category. They had left Dubai some weeks or months ago looking for the next opportunity as you would put it on your linkedIn profile. Except these folks did not have one. Most were coming from God forsaken places, thriving to provide for families they had left back home, and many were in “professional transition”, which meant they needed to find a job, fast, or risk loosing their work permit. Their only escape from the vicissitudes of their lives was a daily dose of Sayyid’s coffee shop.

This part never gets told in the expatriate official tale. Expatriation is not always about living between the expat compound, the 5-star hotel, the platinum lounge and the Michelin star restaurant. It is sometimes less glamourous. Much less. It sometimes sounds like “immigration”. At least for the poor lads who need it most.

Let the board sound

Rabih

An autumn pilgrim

It would have been a typical French Café, not too far from the Opéra Garnier. Sidewalk terrace, wicker chairs, a small round table, and on it two noisettes, which, for those whom Paris has not had yet the pleasure to greet, consist in espresso coffee with a drop of milk giving it a warm hazelnut color. And two folks, enjoying the pale Parisian autumn sun while sipping their noisettes on a cold November afternoon.

Photo by Grillot edouard

They had not seen each other for years. A lot of catch-up to do, but it would have not been about that, they would have been on a tight schedule. They would have not been there for fun but rather on a pilgrimage.

They would have visited the Carnavalet museum, earlier in the day, in a naïve attempt at grasping, through a specific painting, what they both believed would have been La Belle Epoque, “this stubborn, urgent, romantic, belief in a beautiful world that could really survive, if it fights hard enough“, as one of them once put it.

Since they would have found themselves in the Opéra area after that for a quick noisette, they might have strolled around the Christmas displays at the Galleries nearby. Or would have probably moved towards the Parc Monceau, a 25 minute walk through beautiful streets paved with red and yellow leaves: Rue Auber, Boulevard Haussmann, Boulevard Malesherbes. A walk in the park maybe, or maybe not if time was not on their side, and then past it, walking further north towards a very special chocolate factory… Pilgrimage, again…

They would have wanted to check on an old friend, living in the 5th arrondissement in Rue d’Ulm, not far from the Panthéon. He did not talk much and was kind of lonely but nevertheless, the depositary of a name and a legend which should not go to waste.

They would have ended the pilgrimage in a café in Montparnasse, one of four Art Deco cafés facing each other at the intersection of Boulevards Raspail and Montparnasse in the 14th arrondissement. Which one would it have been? Le Dôme? Le Sélect? La Coupole? or maybe La Rotonde…

One of them would have known.

Would have. Could have. Might have. All virtual, all conditional.

Because one of them did not enjoy freedom of movement, was not found worthy of it.

You see, one of them would have come from a small country on the verge of oblivion.

Let the board sound

Rabih

On FinTech and people

Or how it looks from the inside.

Every experience is unique and different people can have different accounts on a career in FinTech. Here’s mine.

I got in FinTech by chance. I received a call I was not expecting. Until that moment, finance did not ring a bell. Trading floors seemed like movie stuff. The Wolf of Wall Street was not out yet so none of the people I knew whom had embraced this career could explain it to me with a simple example. But it struck some strings: the job required extensive travel and I would be expected to become autonomous fairly quick. I was in for both.

I had to learn quite a few things in little time, and this was a major motivator. Learning how a financial platform is operated, learning the operating model of investment banks, funds and treasuries. Learning finance. Bonds, foreign exchange, rates, equities, derivatives, valuation models. Learning how an operations department works, how a front office desk operates, how risk is managed and what is risk for a financial institution. I am still learning 15 years later.

I started on support but was soon entrusted with high stakes decisions and started looking after much larger accounts. I worked on delivery projects around the world. I got to manage senior and less senior people and I thrived to give them opportunities to grow and that place in the sun at which everyone deserves a shot. That was probably the most rewarding part of the ride.

Although many in the field usually come from engineering, computer science or finance backgrounds, I found out later that many of the fintech professionals I would meet, and not the least impressive ones, came from backgrounds as far from banks and finance as can be. I met business architects who graduated with a BA in geography. Traders who studied history. A project manager who was a commissioned officer in a previous life, honorably discharged after having served his country well and lead battalions on many theaters of operations. Another one who was in the navy and an expert on submarine propulsion. And a legendary developer, trained in chemical engineering and a collector of rare minerals.

I also got to work with people from all around the world. French, Italians, Germans, Spanish, English, Welsh, Scots, Icelanders, Swedes, Americans, Brazilians, Lebanese, Syrians, Emirati, Indians, Iranians, Australians, Romanians, Russians, Pakistani, Egyptians, Jordanians, Iraqi, Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians, Senegalese, South Africans, Ivorians, Belgians, Chinese, Pilipino, Indonesians, Malaysians, Japanese, Singaporeans, Kazakh, Turkish, Greeks, Canadians, Polish, Irish, Omani, Kuwaiti, Palestinians, Columbians, Czech, Dutch, and Bulgarians, to name a few. I faced cultural challenges at times, but it was an enriching experience every time.

I got to travel a lot. There were years I would spend most of my time on business trips, in between the airplane, the hotel and the trading floor. Projects took me to the UK, Italy, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Iceland, The Netherlands, The United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Russia and Turkey, many times over, and I have more stories of nearly missed planes and last minute miracles, of 2AM naps on a random couch on a trading floor somewhere in the world and all night celebrations when the fight is finally over, of epic fails and even more epic successes than I can count.

Photo by Christine Renard

I have had Borscht in Moscow, duck tongues in Hong Kong and donkey meat in Milan. I have been challenged to the hottest curries by Indian colleagues and to the most treacherous vodkas by Polish ones. I have laughed my head out countless times cracking jokes around a beer with the same clients who had cornered me in a workshop earlier in the day.

I’ve lost many hours of sleep across the globe but won so many good memories along the way. I also gained a few friends for life. Folks, I hope you are reading this, you will recognize yourselves.

Make no mistake, the job is not for the faint hearted. The pressure is tremendous, the working hours long and the clients very demanding. Nerve wrecking situations are the norm, especially if you work in delivery. You get humbled quite a few times, but on the bright side, you are surrounded by extremely bright people and the rewards are at the level of the challenge.

I hope my colleagues and fellow professionals will recognize themselves in these stories, that it will bring a smile on their faces in these dire times and wish that readers see the job for what it really is, a people job. And no amount of Work from Home will change that.

Let the board sound

Rabih